Mirror's Edge Catalyst runs on Pentiums

[VirtualLarry]

Next on the Big(ot) Gamer's agenda - keeping gamers from playing the same games on a GTX970, as on a Titan X.

"If they don't have 6GB of VRAM, they should suffer and burn!"

Anyone that think a dual core CPU is a good choice for a gaming CPU to play these kinds of massive, cutting edge titles DESERVES to be burned when the game refuses to launch, or it runs like a car with square shaped tires.

Sorry, but gamers with toasters shouldn't be trying to play these games in the first place. The developer obviously isn't catering to those people, so they should seek their enjoyment elsewhere..

 

[Spjut]

I don't care if dual cores go extinct for modern gaming by lacking the power to make up for the lesser threads, but I would have been angry if they were arbitrarily locked out

 

[MiddleOfTheRoad]

Isn't 8ms like 120fps?
What exactly is the point you are making here?

Uh, stuttering like a slideshow isn't exactly playable. And the G3258 and the G4400 (to a lesser degree) sutter terribly on newer, multi-threaded games. A dual core runs these things like they caught the hiccups.

 

[MiddleOfTheRoad]

Exactly. I just dont understand the quad or go home crowd. And to be honest, I have a quad, but I also would like as many people as possible to be able to play the game.

It makes a lot of sense for a developer to require a 4 thread CPU. The developer / software team doesn't need to get trashed by reviewers because of poor gaming performance. An i3 gaming PC costs about the same (or less) than a modern gaming console.

VR is probably going to kill the budget PC game system anyways -- so the argument is probably moot.

 

[IllogicalGlory]

It makes a lot of sense for a developer to require a 4 thread CPU. The developer / software team doesn't need to get trashed by reviewers because of poor gaming performance. An i3 gaming PC costs about the same (or less) than a modern gaming console.

I don't see why anyone should care about a user who doesn't meet the minimum specs complaining about the performance.

You can bet that people will complain about the game not being able to even start up too. Letting dual core users play would make them happier even if the performance is terrible.

 

[Carfax83]

As for what is "sufficient", well maybe you should let the user decide. I will agree, it certainly isn't optimal, but I would bet a dual core with a decent dgpu like a 750Ti will play 90% or more of the games better than any apu or a system with a GT740 level dgpu or below.

I prefer the let the devs decide. They're the ones making the game after all. I don't care what hardware someone uses to play a game, but I DO care if developers code their engines to target hardware that is below even console specifications.

One of the best things about this console generation, is that it forced developers to multithread their engines. Otherwise, they would never get any decent performance out of the weak CPUs in the consoles.

Appealing to dual core CPUs would be a step backward, as developers should continue their path towards greater parallelism in their engines because that's the technological trend.

Next on the Big(ot) Gamer's agenda - keeping gamers from playing the same games on a GTX970, as on a Titan X.

"If they don't have 6GB of VRAM, they should suffer and burn!"

Right on. And if you think I will recant my sentiments, you're dead wrong.. ()

Anyone that uses a dual core CPU with modern AAA games because they're too cheap to afford a quad core, deserves to have their games either not run at all, or run like complete and utter crap..

 

[Erenhardt]

I don't see why anyone should care about a user who doesn't meet the minimum specs complaining about the performance.

You can bet that people will complain about the game not being able to even start up too. Letting dual core users play would make them happier even if the performance is terrible.

I don't know which is better, being called out by dual cores for locking them out or having your game tainted with terrible reviews on steam due to Lagz0rs! Stutters, unplayable, 0 optimizations, worst port ever!, don't buy runs like crap.

One makes everybody with dualcore not purchase your game, the other makes a dent on sales across all PC gamers.

Anyway, game is well optimized, as expected and runs on everything.

 

[TheELF]

Uh, stuttering like a slideshow isn't exactly playable. And the G3258 and the G4400 (to a lesser degree) sutter terribly on newer, multi-threaded games. A dual core runs these things like they caught the hiccups.

Sure,but not if your slowest frame is at more than 120FPS...


Also stutter and bad performance is not about core count,but about devs using the physical limits of the ass weak console cores as "timers" /game speed limiters by running the main thread at high priority so it will run on it's own ,and as fast as possible on a console core, but messing up the scheduler on windows,which things that a high priority thread should actually run at high priority...

No internal timers/synchronization is the main cause of bad performance,and yes it does hit dual cores more often and harder but no one is safe no matter how many or how strong a core he sports.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VN-mdoMDuSQ gta 5
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWTk7J5qdcg AC:S

I'm all for multithreading games more but do it right,telling people that you need a lot of cores just because the devs are too bored to check their thread priorities,or even put a slider in the options is just wrong.

 

[partol]

Here's a good example of how to easily fix stuttering on a dual-core cpu.

GTA 5 with 60 fps limit = very stuttery
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9Tf0q2VeCY

GTA 5 with 30 fps limit = not 100% smooth, but much smoother
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwqzXj1h8uY

I personally would not accept playing at 30fps, but some people don't mind.

 

[AndreM]

Here's a good example of how to easily fix stuttering on a dual-core cpu.

GTA 5 with 60 fps limit = very stuttery
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9Tf0q2VeCY

GTA 5 with 30 fps limit = not 100% smooth, but much smoother
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwqzXj1h8uY

I personally would not accept playing at 30fps, but some people don't mind.

Good links, 30 fps works nice in some games and other games just need drastic better fps..

 

[Magic Carpet]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUVXAl0dgYY

A line has been crossed and not it shall never be uncrossed. D:

If memory serves me right, Doom 3 recommended minimum 64mb of VRAM and 512mb for Ultra textures (that's like 8 times more). Hell, that ancient Voodoo had 1/4 of the minimum. Think about it. Of course, it wasn't much playable but it could run it, lmao

Today is nothing and people always complain. Can't wait for 4C/8T CPUs and 8GB Vram GPUs to become obsolete. The amount of stagnation over the last decade has been amazing. Just boring :thumbsdown:

No killer apps to make/require hardware to be more advanced. Can't wait for the time when AI finally takes over. Maybe in another decade or so.

 

[LTC8K6]

If you tell me it needs a quad-core, and I have a dual-core, I generally don't buy the game.

It seems to me that cuts out some sales, which the developer certainly doesn't want?

If the game will actually play on a dual core with lowered settings, then it seems foolish to put a quad-core minimum on it?

How many people out there have lower end CPUs in their computers? A lot, I presume.

AMD and Intel are still making new dual-core CPUs.

 

[TheELF]

No killer apps to make/require hardware to be more advanced. Can't wait for the time when AI finally takes over. Maybe in another decade or so.

AI will only work well on quantum computers,and those will suck at pretty much anything we do today.

 

[NTMBK]

Exactly. I just dont understand the quad or go home crowd. And to be honest, I have a quad, but I also would like as many people as possible to be able to play the game.

I still wouldn't recommend a dual core without HT to someone looking to build a new gaming system- there's too many cases where games won't run (or won't run smoothly) without hacks or mods. But the longer people can make their old C2D systems last, the better!

 

[cytg111]

As expected.
I suspect this will all change for console ports after PS4.5 and its xbone counterpart though.

 

[TheELF]

there's too many cases where games won't run (or won't run smoothly) without hacks or mods.

Which in itself shows that it's all due to bad developing.

 

[Shehriazad]

More like....Mirror's Edge Catalyst stutters on Pentiums.



I never really doubted that it would RUN...but it won't be enjoyable. That said I am someone that back in the day played the entire game Neverwinter Nights with 5-8 fps because my PC was SO shitty. (and the game can easily consume 100 hours)

But that game was a turn/round based rpg and not some first person platformer/action game...stuttering will really kill it hardcore.
If it works like in GTA 5 where 30 fps makes it "acceptable"...well then you still get to play it with "console feeling"...but...uh...yea.

 

[frozentundra123456]

More like....Mirror's Edge Catalyst stutters on Pentiums.



I never really doubted that it would RUN...but it won't be enjoyable. That said I am someone that back in the day played the entire game Neverwinter Nights with 5-8 fps because my PC was SO shitty. (and the game can easily consume 100 hours)

But that game was a turn/round based rpg and not some first person platformer/action game...stuttering will really kill it hardcore.
If it works like in GTA 5 where 30 fps makes it "acceptable"...well then you still get to play it with "console feeling"...but...uh...yea.

Did you even look at the benchmarks and video posted in this thread, or just assume it would be a bad experience because it was a dual core?

The *minimum* FPS was greater than 60. Yes the frametimes were the longest in the TH test, but they werent that bad. And the video looked quite playable. In fact, this seems to be one of the least demanding cpu wise games in a while, which makes it doubly strange that they say 4 threads is required.

 

[NTMBK]

Which in itself shows that it's all due to bad developing.

That may or may not be true, but sadly that's the way it is. The games are how they are, and we have to make our decisions accordingly.

 

[Hitman928]

Did you even look at the benchmarks and video posted in this thread, or just assume it would be a bad experience because it was a dual core?

The *minimum* FPS was greater than 60. Yes the frametimes were the longest in the TH test, but they werent that bad. And the video looked quite playable. In fact, this seems to be one of the least demanding cpu wise games in a while, which makes it doubly strange that they say 4 threads is required.

The TH graph was for a different game, it was just used as an example. I don't think anyone has done frame time analysis on Mirror's Edge Catalyst yet.

 

[frozentundra123456]

The TH graph was for a different game, it was just used as an example. I don't think anyone has done frame time analysis on Mirror's Edge Catalyst yet.

Oops. Should have read the fine print I guess. Then we really dont know whether it stutters or not, except from the video, which seems smooth. But I dont put much stock in Youtube videos for game analysis. With a min FPS of over 60 though, I would not expect it to be that bad. I mean I have played entire games like DAI and W3 with *ave* FPS 30 or less.

 

[Carfax83]

Which in itself shows that it's all due to bad developing.

This is the kind of thinking that we don't need. Both GTA V and Assassin's Creed Syndicate listed quad cores as their minimum requirement, and only by resorting to hacks are the games even playable on a dual core CPU.

As some of us have been repeating endlessly, modern game engines are attempting to exploit as much parallelism as possible by using a task based approach which uses any available thread. So this means that several different workloads can be spread across the CPU's threads at the same time, which increases performance significantly.

What you call bad developing, is actually smart developing and is the best way to tap into the power of increasingly multicore/threaded CPUs

But the trade off is that CPUs with less cores/threads have a much greater chance of choking on the workload because they have to process several worker threads on two threads, many of which will take up significant CPU time. That's the reason why developers are so reluctant to include dual core CPUs in their hardware recommendations.

I already said in the last thread that it's theoretically possible for games like The Division to run on an exceptionally fast single core CPU. But the game would have to be reprogrammed to do so, because the way it's programmed now, it expects the CPU to have at least four threads to handle all of assignments.

 

[ShintaiDK]

So in the end of the day it was the console 0+1 affinity and the game runs fine with a dual core. How...unsurprising.

Hopefully people learned not to defend this practice again when the devs are lazy in their port.

 

[MiddleOfTheRoad]

I prefer the let the devs decide. They're the ones making the game after all. I don't care what hardware someone uses to play a game, but I DO care if developers code their engines to target hardware that is below even console specifications.

One of the best things about this console generation, is that it forced developers to multithread their engines. Otherwise, they would never get any decent performance out of the weak CPUs in the consoles.

Appealing to dual core CPUs would be a step backward, as developers should continue their path towards greater parallelism in their engines because that's the technological trend.

Right on. And if you think I will recant my sentiments, you're dead wrong.. ()

Anyone that uses a dual core CPU with modern AAA games because they're too cheap to afford a quad core, deserves to have their games either not run at all, or run like complete and utter crap..

Exactly. Agree 110%.

Why the hell should we let people hold back game engines because of a couple of cheap complainers (with dual cores)? By going multithreaded for quad, six or even eight cores -- developers can get more advanced, immersive experiences. I was actually happy when Oculus Rift and HTC coming out with high system requirements and kicking the crap boxes to the curb. It's the garbage PC's that are holding the rest of us back.

Developers shouldn't be catering to 2007 CPU architecture anymore. Wanna play a modern game? Well, you need to buy a modern CPU and GPU to do so.

 

[MiddleOfTheRoad]

Which in itself shows that it's all due to bad developing.

Nope, other way around. Developers stopped supporting legacy dual core architecture. Dual cores are over
a decade old now -- seriously, put the old horse down.... It's got a broken leg.